


The Big Things and The Small

by The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 18:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prior to his return, Sherlock has prepared himself for all the big things that will have changed. He had not anticipated the small things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Big Things and The Small

**Author's Note:**

> Well here we are again, with another reichenbach reunion fic, seeing as people seemed to like my last one. Not that this one is in anyway related to either of my previous Sherlock fics. This was my way of celebrating finishing all of my uni coursework until January. By giving myself the most epic of feels and letting them out in a story. This story is as yet un-beataed but if and when it is proofread i will make any corrections in spelling/grammar/typing.

Sherlock had prepared himself for the big things. He’d known there would be anger, and disbelief. He was prepared for the punch that knocked him to the ground. He’d been bracing himself for it for quite some time, had welcomed it even. When John shouted at him, and didn’t want to listen to his reasons, he accepted it, he gave him time. He left the flat and waited outside for two hours before he got so cold he couldn’t feel his fingers and had to let himself back in, because he had nowhere else to go now. He was well aware that two hours was not nearly enough time for John to take in all that had happened. He was prepared to give John all the time in the world. 

He knows he will need to explain. He has rehearsed what he will say over and over again inside his head. He has had so much time to practise, so many times hunched over a phone in dismal hotel rooms and side streets and abandoned houses. So many times where he clutched the phone in shaking fingers and was so close to typing in the familiar number and hearing that voice and explaining everything, knowing that explaining would not save John. In the most recent days, with the Moran gone and the rest of Moriarty’s web splintered, Sherlock had made his peace with the fact that no amount of explaining would ever be good enough. In the end he stays up all night explaining, sat on the sofa while John sits in the armchair, a safe distance between them. A distance which closes over the course of the evening, until John is sat beside him and their hands are almost touching.

He had prepared himself for the fact that John would have changed. Even without emotional upheaval and post-traumatic stress disorder and depression and grief, three years would change anyone. Sherlock knew that his ‘death’ would have changed John, probably for the worst. He knew what bereavement looked like. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, what the return of a loved one could do to the bereaved but he had a pretty good idea. And Sherlock’s ‘good ideas’ were usually pretty accurate. He had prepared himself for what he thought would be the worst.

Sherlock had prepared himself for the big things because he thought that it was only the big things that could damage him now.

It was the small things he had not prepared for. 

It was those small things that hurt.

The flecks of grey in John’s hair that hadn’t been there before. The weight loss. The way John looked was supposed to be a constant. It was not supposed to change. Such a small thing, yet it stung like salt in an open wound for Sherlock. Many small things did that now.

The return of the old limp, and the old cane that John had abandoned within a day of meeting Sherlock. 

The nightmares. Sherlock has his own share of those, but it’s always John’s nightmares that wake him, John yelling out in his sleep that fills Sherlock with dread and agonizing sadness. 

Some of Sherlock’s favourite jumpers are no longer worn. Too old, or too frayed or too many memories.

After a week or so of being home (he is still tentative to refer to anywhere as home) Sherlock asks where the skull is. John winces and says that Molly had to take it away when he returned to Baker Street after Sherlock was buried. John couldn’t bear to look at it, much less touch it. Every time he looked at it, he thought of Sherlock’s skull. And the pavement outside St. Barts. John tells Sherlock this bluntly, maybe still wanting to shock or hurt him. No less than he deserves. It does the trick. Neither Sherlock nor John can face the thought of getting the skull out from its storage place for a long time after that. 

Sherlock had prepared himself for anger and depression. He had not prepared himself for the complete and utter blankness he sometimes saw behind John’s eyes. Even month’s after his return, Sherlock would still catch John staring into space, and he wondered how much of the time in the past three years John had spent staring into space, waiting for empty seconds to pass. 

John taking medication every morning just looks so very wrong. So out of place. The pills garish beside the tea and toast that John spent so many mornings coercing Sherlock into consuming, which he now struggles to eat himself. He says he has trouble with his swallowing. Sherlock knows what he means. He also feels the ball in his throat of stuck words he cannot say. The labels that go with the pills do not attach in Sherlock’s mind to John. Labels of depression and hallucinations brought on by grief. The ball in Sherlock’s throat sticks tighter.

And then there are things that have not changed at all. 

His violin still sits in the living room, waiting for him to pick it up again. Sherlock is unsure how John will feel about him playing it but when he does John tells him how much he likes the sound of violins. He tells Sherlock about the CD of violin music he has, and how he used to play it on the days when it was too silent and the nights that were too long. Sherlock keeps playing after John tells him this, despite the fact his hands are now shaking.

Sherlock’s bedroom is largely untouched. Tidied, maybe. His dressing gown hanging in the wardrobe instead of lying on the floor where he left it. The bed made. Mycroft paid Sherlock’s half of the rent for three years so that John could remain in the flat without a stranger defiling Sherlock’s room. Even to Sherlock it feels like a shrine. He does not sleep well in there. He always preferred the sofa anyway. 

And John is still John. Damaged and changed, but still John. He is still loyal and brave (braver than Sherlock ever realised before). He still smells like John. A new brand of shampoo or fabric detergent maybe, but still intrinsically John. It’s enough that when they hug, awkwardly, after a week or more of terse silences and each flinching back from the others touch as though that would break the spell they have fallen under, it takes Sherlock’s breath away. They both still fit together the same way as before. John’s head under Sherlock’s chin, his arms working their way inside Sherlock’s coat, around his waist. Sherlock’s hands on John’s back, able to feel the scar on John’s shoulder beneath his fingertips.

And then Sherlock cries. He has not cried since a rooftop three years ago, but now he does so. And John clings to him, alarmed but not repelled. Concerned but not leaving. 

Sherlock is not sure whether the tears are for the small things that have changed which hurt him or the one constant that has not changed at all and which he promises he will never hurt again.


End file.
